Elon
Musk uses six questions anytime he needs to come up with an idea,
solve a problem, or decide whether to start a
business.Aaron P.
Bernstein/Reuters

Elon Musk asks himself the same six questions before
making any big decision.

He uses the process as his own version of the
scientific method.

The inventor and engineer Elon Musk has successfully started four
billion-dollar companies: PayPal, Solar City, SpaceX, and Tesla.
And to launch them — and to answer any complex question — he uses
the same approach, he told Neil Strauss of
Rolling Stone.

Musk uses these six questions anytime he needs to come up with an
idea, solve a problem, or decide whether to start a business. He
values this kind of evidence-based decision-making, and he
criticized people who can’t separate fact from feeling.

Most people employ “It’s true because I said it’s true,” he told
Strauss. “It’s very unscientific.”